Conventional wisdom says a conference of 1,400 members of the Future Farmers of America (FAA) at Penn State University in rural State College would be a safe bet for President Bush to sell his plan to privatize Social Security.

Violence in Iraq has escalated sharply since a new government was named in early May, with an average of 30 Iraqi civilians killed every day. Joblessness, power cuts and lack of sanitation and health care remain at crisis levels and in some areas have worsened, with cholera and tuberculosis on the rise.

On June 21 a jury of nine whites and three Blacks in Philadelphia, Miss., convicted octogenarian and former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter, exactly 41 years after the triple slaying of young civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.
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CHICAGO — The Communist Party USA returns to its birthplace this week as 500 labor, peace, civil rights and community activists, and international guests converge here for the party’s 28th national convention, July 1-3.

Six Iraqi union leaders touring the U.S. this week called for an end to the U.S. occupation and expressed hope that American workers would support their efforts to protect Iraqi workers’ rights and defeat privatization. U.S. Labor Against the War sponsored the 17-day, 25-city tour by the representatives of three major labor organizations in Iraq.
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WASHINGTON — “Let Conyers in!” the crowd chanted at the White House gate the evening of June 16. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and a dozen other lawmakers had come to deliver petitions signed by 566,000 people demanding that President George W. Bush answer for the so-called Downing Street Memo proving that he “fixed” intelligence to justify war on Iraq.

PHILADELPHIA — A coalition of labor and community groups rallied here May 25 to demand an increase Pennsylvania’s minimum wage, which has remained frozen at $5.15 an hour for eight years. Rally speakers demanded that the state Legislature hike the wage to $7.15 an hour to provide adequate worker income and to bring it closer to the minimum wage prevailing in nearby states.

This book is a collection of 33 short biographies about the lives and actions of people who are deeply committed in changing the world. As the cover of the book states, “You know the names of Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela.” Yet it questions the reader, “But have you ever heard of Roy Bourgeois, Neta Golan, or Sulak Sivaraksa?” There are many brave men and women who are activists and continue in the tradition of faith-based activism.